Techniques to Measure, Model, and Manage Power

Book chapter, 2012

Society's increasing dependence on information technology has resulted in the deployment of vast compute resources. The energy costs of operating these resources coupled with environmental concerns have made energy-aware computing one of the primary challenges for the IT sector. Making energy-efficient computing a rule rather than an exception requires that researchers and system designers use the right set of techniques and tools. These involve measuring, analyzing, and controlling the energy expenditure of computers at varying degrees of granularity. In this chapter, we present techniques to measure power consumption of computer systems at various levels and to compare their effectiveness. We discuss methodologies to estimate processor power consumption using performance-counter-based power modeling and show how the power models can be used for power-aware scheduling. Armed with such techniques and methodologies, we as a research and development community can better address challenges in power-aware management.